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IIA Toolshed #1

Screencasting Tools

Tooler’s Choice? Camtasia because of the range of functionality, ease of use, support and additional use for easy video editing.

General Information

And we’re off! We’re delighted to welcome you to the inaugural post from the IIA Toolshed!

What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.

TOPIC 1: Screencasting Tools First up to test were a range of screencasting tools! What is Screencasting, you ask?? Screencasting is a really neat process of recording what’s happening on your screen as you do it. You can include narration as part of the recording, to explain exactly what you’re doing on screen, all from your own computer or laptop. Screencasting software is often used for short “how-to” videos and online tutorials. It can be a really helpful way to show a customer how to do something technical, as if you’re by their side! Here’s what we found about the four tools we reviewed:

An easy-to-use screen recorder that acts as powerful video editor by recording your voice and on screen actions. It also allow the easy import of additional media and advanced editing functions.

A low cost easy to use screen capture tool for the Mac.

Entry level screencasting & screen capture tool

What’s It Like To Use?

Easy to use. Simple to install. Free product. It's got a lot of functionality that make it too advanced for the average Joe.

Intuitive and very flexible piece of software. Good tutorials. Trial download with only an email address required and full functionality for 30 days. Designed to have you up and running with projects very quickly. Lots of functionality and export options.

Screencast Maker allows you to record your entire screen or just part of it. It also allows to narrate audio and even allows you to include video from your webcam. Output in.mov.

Free, easy to download, you can record activity you carry out on your screen, to share with others, including recording narration for additional explanation. Output in swf format and png for images

Is There Anything I Should Know?

If you are an Apple app store maker and you want to make videos to sell your product, this is the tool for you.

Camtasia has restrictions but its core abilities of creating professional screencasts is more than enough. Navigation and editing were easy with good ‘undo’ and keyboard shortcuts meaning you don't to start from scratch with mistakes. Transitions, inserting text, adding pointer arrows and animation are simple with drag and drop. Editing and cutting out sections was fast and less fiddly than other software.
Export as an MP4 was simple along with other sharing options for YouTube etc al.
As an MP4 it was simple to upload natively to other platforms and to insert on websites.
It took approximately 4 hours to go from first open to a reasonably polished looking screen cast.

There is a free trial available at screencastmaker.com where you can create screencasts of 2 minutes or less, but €4.99 will get you the full version. Screencast Maker is great for start ups and SMEs on a shoe string budget.

What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Well stay tuned, because every 6 weeks we’ll be reviewing another set of tools. Next up, we’re reviewing Social Media Publishing tools. Which ones? Well you’ll have to come back to find out… all will be revealed in early May!

Summary: Overall, it’s fair to say that Camtasia is the standard that most people expect, and around the table it was commonly agreed that it had the best feature set. Thereafter Screencastmaker is a good option for those who are a bit more cash-strapped, but keen to get going. The other tools are more likely to be used for those getting started, or for internal communications.

All opinions are based on the personal views and experiences of the individual ‘toolers’ as business professionals and digital marketers.Each tool is reviewed by 2+ individuals to ensure objectivity. Opinions expressed by IIA Toolshed are not the opinions of any organisation, or group of organisations, who participate. Time is given freely by all members for this initiative.

I’m Roseanne Smith, the IIA’s new Membership, Marketing and Communications Manager. I started work with the IIA last Tuesday and it’s been full speed ahead since then.

With the Congress coming up in less than five weeks there has been a lot of interest in membership. It was particularly busy on Friday as our early bird offer closed so there was a desperate scramble to renew membership (Yes it is true: you are not alone although it gets lonelier by the day in the “Oops forgot to renew my membership” camp!) and to avail of the great offers. EUR195.00 for members – a bargain!*

I’ve also been dealing with a number of interesting queries from members and it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to post some of these queries in anonymised form here. I like to think I know a thing or two about this whole Internet business but unfortunately the queries happened to be about the other things about which I couldn’t claim expertise. Let me know what you think: how would you feel about your internet woes being the subject of discussion on this site. Leave a comment to let me know what you think.

And to finish some of you might be scratching your heads wondering where do I know her from so a lá Troy McClure from The Simpsons you might know me from:

Rathmines in Dublin where I grew up

Scoil Bhríde, Ranelagh and Muckross Park, Donnybrook where I went to school

Trinity College Dublin where I got a degree in Drama Studies and Modern Irish and a M.Sc. in Multimedia Systems

Too many stage productions to list as either cast or crew

(And now this is really McClure-esque) “Amú san Áis” starring Hector Ó hEochagáin – you may have seen my name in the roller on: I was the researcher

Gaelport.com: I’m a fluent Irish speaker and I was responsible for developing this community focussed site